Mendicino, CaliforniaAugust 1952

On August 14, 1952, at approximately 10:25 p.m., a civilian observer in Lake Charles, Louisiana watched a bright, moving light hover and maneuver over the Mathieson Chemical Corporation facility. The object was yellowish in color, though it shifted toward red as it moved. The observer watched from his lawn at 319 College Street while facing west, with the object roughly three miles away at an estimated altitude of 5,000 feet. His wife and teenage son also witnessed the sighting.

The object behaved erratically. It undulated up and down and side to side, then would suddenly shoot ahead at what the observer estimated to be around 1,000 miles per hour, before stopping abruptly. Throughout the roughly twenty-minute sighting, the object produced no sound, trail, or exhaust. Its shape could not be determined because it appeared only as a moving light. As it departed, the object grew darker and darker red until it vanished into the distance.

The observer was a district engineer for an engineering company based in Los Angeles, and he stated the light was steady and unwavering, ruling out what he called a "figment of imagination." The weather was clear with no clouds. No photographs, physical evidence, or additional corroborating data were collected. The Air Force notes in the case file that the sighting resembled no known aircraft, and no interception or identification action was taken.

The case file indicates the Air Force considered this sighting possibly a meteor, though this conclusion appears only as a brief mention rather than a formal evaluation. The full case file, held by the National Archives, runs 12 pages as microfilmed.